Bee vision is not adapted for pattern or shape.

Abstract This chapter provides information on various experiments conducted to determine whether bee vision is adapted for pattern or shape recognition. It was shown that bees learned to ignore cues that were the same on both targets and they remembered one or more simple cues in order of preference, but nothing about the pattern plan or shape. For each pair of patterns that was detected, the bees learned a selection from the same small repertoire of cues. When a new pair of patterns was substituted, the bees were obliged to learn the new situation. In each context, therefore, they could learn only one task, but in a different context, there would be other tasks.